The Man and The Outlaw

Chapter Thirteen

Todd Pryor did not conceal his fury as the injured man sputtered his excuses before him. They had failed to take the girl and this whimpering cur was the only surviving man to return to him. He would not remain that way for long. Todd lowered his gun at the man's forehead.
"One little woman, that's all I asked. You couldn't even do that right," he snarled, and he pulled the trigger. The back of the man's head blew apart and he slumped to the ground where Todd kicked him once for good measure.
Taking a kerchief from the pocket of his shirt, Todd wiped the blood spatter from his hand and his gun, discarding the soiled thing atop the man's body when he was finished. He whistled for the barman from his seat in the empty outer dining area and immediately the man appeared at the back door of the barroom. Todd got up from his seat and reached into is pocket for a wad of bills.
"Take care of him for me, would you Charlie?" He offered the money and Charlie took it, nodding his head and assessing the situation as Todd left.
One of the good ones, Todd thought as he left the barroom behind him and strolled down a side street to where he'd left his car. Charlie had helped him out in a pinch more than once or twice and Todd counted him as a kind of friend. Of course, "friend" to Todd meant only that you could do things for him that he otherwise couldn't or preferred not to do for himself.
Todd was still fuming as he drove away. Clara had escaped. It was his own fault, leaving idiots to ride off with guns and fail miserably while he thought he would sit and wait for her to be brought to him. Now, he knew that he had to be the one to chase her down. It could only be him. She was much too clever and brave for just any thugs. Still, he had other limbs he could activate, other means of learning her whereabouts in other places. He would have to get on the phone and reignite some old sources.
Todd was a man used to getting what he wanted, whether he had to take it by force or not. He'd wanted her from the start, from the minute she emerged from the truck to help her father with the cattle. He'd wanted her, not because she was beautiful, though she was, but because she seemed such a wild thing to him, raised by only a father, brought up through a hard path of life in farming, born with marks that both intrigued and scared him.
That was more to the point. He did not like to be afraid, to feel at the mercy of such a thing as fear. What scared him, he vowed to conquer by any means that he could manage. She had shown up alone, that had been her mistake. Was he not to take that opportunity when it fell so neatly into his lap? Was he not to face his fears? To master them once and for all?
But she had bitten back. That was something he had not expected, albeit rather foolishly. It had taken some work to convince all those he'd met while under her spell that it had all been a Silvertongue ploy to ruin a good man's reputation. Luckily, he could be quite persuasive when he needed to be. Even luckier, people often wanted to think the worst of her kind and were primed to believe any negative thing that they heard about them. Still, it had taken a lot of effort and promises made. His own mother looked at him with a different suspicion in her eye now and never lingered long in a room alone with him. He would make her pay for that and generously. She would regret ever setting her voice on him. He would make sure of that.